Author's Note
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Factory Reset
Lightning Dust hardly had a second of warning before she heard the rumble of muffled thunder outside. It almost matched the sound in her stomach, coiling from nausea and disgust over what she’d seen.
Even now, the images of those Clousdale ‘Spectra’ Factories lingered in Dust's mind like clawmarks on a corpse. The dirt and blood caking those walls felt like they pricked at her eyes. The decomposition of the skeletons in those vats, and the implication of their… tiny sizes.
Lightning was barely past twenty, and yet she was sure those images would follow her until she turned two hundred.
Even now she felt like bucking herself for so much back then, the way-too-long length of time it took to see this size in her rival least among them. There was so many more regrets she had to this point, so many knots in the tapestry of her life she should have picked at.
Like how those countless reports of Cloudsdale's missing fillies were just hoof-waved away with 'going the same way as Fluttershy'. That one burned in Lightning Dust's heart; had that monster she'd once thought her competitive nemesis come up with that too? She didn't even know who Fluttershy was, but now, with the faint knowledge from her Captain that she was one of Dash's friends (formerly, thank Celestia)? It had to be this, it had to.
And following up on that, the absolutely should of silence those same Clousdale papers had when Dust had first found these. Even now, she was happy she was away from the choking curtain of dark clouds in the sky, minutes from the entrance to one of these chambers of hour, taking action as had typified her entire life. Because now, in ways more numerous than she dared to think of, justice seemed as lost as the moon behind these thunderclouds.
Thunderclouds that had been fueled by their own kin.
In machines ran, maintained, happily fed by their best and brightest.
And Lightning didn't even know if Dash would face a second of music for this.
Or if she was even still in Cloudsdale.
They had been a bit too fast to whisk away that still-grinning pegasus after all. And with the riots, the chaotic weather, and even reports of the returning windigoes - Cloudsdale was just fighting to stay alive, let alone alert.
All except the Wonderbolts seemed lost in the wind.
Lightning Dust fought in her next gulp of air, the tension in the air making her neck muscles stand out.
Only one way to compensate for this oversight, then.
And so she rolled over, bracing herself near the door. The firearm felt warming in her hoof; relieving. Even the clamp keeping it to her foreehoof was like a glove. Much like the ones that Captain Spitfire had knitted for her, so long ago.
For how long that had felt familiar, Lightning didn’t want to recall. Now wasn't the time to think of Wonderbolts as soft, and fiercely protective, and embodying of good.
Right now, she needed to see one Wonderbolt in particular as she always should have; a nesting doll of nightmares, in need of a swift breaking down.
Just then, the door slammed open and a green blur shot past them. Dust doesn’t even give orders to the other Wonderbolt ponies. They’d been through the routine so many times before. So many lost lives before.
The rat-tat-tats got louder, and so did Dust's doubts. What new horror had that lunatic Dash cooked up? Was it a bomb? Another deathtrap?
… Another chamber of horrors?
SCREEEEEEEEEEEE-BANG!
And then they breached another door; Lightning Dust couldn’t wait any longer. She slammed past the splintered door, the other ‘Bolts behind her following like a tidal wave.
Lightning actually missed tackling such waves in Horseshoe Bay with Spitfire, right down to her un-Captain-like chortling as they battled the briny blue together. The second I get home again, she promised. The second the nightmare stopped, that these raids ended.
The other privates flooded into the room, taking down scientists, rushing guards into the walls, snatching away those gaunt-faced fillies for evacs. It was like a hydra uncoiling in this room, whisking the innocents away from this darkened room with the steam, and the strobe lights, and the sink.
Away from this hell too close to home.
Yet through it all, Lightning aimed everywhere her eyes could reach with her pistol, mind a hazy mess as she tried to find anything to fire it at, andy monster in lab-coat-swathed armor who thought it was fun to make a fucking graveyard of her home, who-
“Lightning!”
Faust be damned, who was screaming that? Was one of her fellow Bolts hurt? Her eyes shot around for the source. Maybe she’d need to fire a warning shot, just to make sense of this chaos.
“Lightning! Stop, you’re HALLUCINATING AGAIN! Baby please, this is our kitchen, not that factory!”
Goodness, Lightning wanted to go home. Wanted to be anywhere but here. Wanted this to stop being two-thirds of her day, as present in her nightmares as it was in her job.
“It’s me, Spitfire!”
Was one of these freaks taunting her? Lightning aimed her weapon at the closest scientist. Sweat stung at her brow, but she still saw the yellow fur under that coat. That orange, spiky mane. Those fearful gold eyes.
Wait.
Gold?
“Lightning! Put the gun down, you’re home!”
Despite herself, Lightning had to blink. And the second she did…
Her squad disappeared. The fillies - the scientists - everything faded.
It was just Dust, and her weapon, and the fountains of sweat clinging to her like a blanket once had.
And Spitfire, holding up her hooves, right in the center of their kitchen.
Lightning’s eyes widened. Her nausea returned twofold. Despite the kettle whistling clear air into her nostrils, she somehow felt sicker. And despite her heavy breaths, that thought of her tackling waves with her wife was one of the last on her mind now.
She was Lieutenant Lightning Dust, and she’d never felt further from home.
